The Czar, the Demons and the delicious Midnight Snack by Dagegen

The Czar, the Demons and the delicious Midnight Snack is a bullet-hell style game, in which you try to save your small planet from gigantic tentacly demons.
The quiet lives of the peaceful Carottlings got shaken up, when their Czar accidentally opened a portal to the 7th plane of the accursed Netherworld, while trying to get a midnight snack. Now the only hope of the little orange creatures is to move their whole planet.
Can you dodge the tentacles and other space hazzards or will the small world of the Carrotlings meet its end?
Controlls
Mouse
Downloads
Windows: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw1UKjwOUtTXUzBjWjRTLXJnUWc/view?usp=sharing
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw1UKjwOUtTXekZGTnBfbFdwdEU/view?usp=sharing
Tools
- Unity 5.5
- Photoshop
- Bosca Ceoil
- Bfxr
- VCR OSD Mono Font
Post Mortem
(to come...)
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-czar-the-demons-and-the-delicious-midnight-snack |
Ratings
| Overall | 438th | 2.909⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 299th | 3.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 496th | 2.273⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 362th | 3.136⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 270th | 3.273⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 392th | 2⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 42th | 3.739⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 388th | 2.783⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
Notes:
- The music gets a bit repetitive after a while
- maybe there need to be more feedback when you lose health, I didn't notice a few times
- Health goes below zero if you get to much damage
I only manages to survive a few minutes, the idea is good, and I like bullet hell, good job!
The gameplay itself is very simple, but I could enjoy it. I didn't get the 'Danger!' zone at first, because I thought that was just an indicator that something's coming up, and not an indicator for where exactly it's coming, but the rest was very clear and easy to understand.
The song is really annoying. Like, really annoying. To a point where I had to turn down the volume. It's a bit unfortunate, but what can you do.
Overall I really like your game. Good work.
The gameplay is simple to understand and reactive, which is nice.
Maybe the music is a bit too "aggressive" (maybe it's a famous carrot song?) I expected some evolution in the gameplay, maybe some abilities or events with left or right click, but hey, game jam! =)
The gameplay is simple. It works, but doesn't seem to get any harder as time goes on. It is a bit on the dull side due to that. When death finally comes, it is a completely random mixture of all the hazards trapping you to a corner or some such nonsense where you have no way of affecting your fate.
I think the main reason for the lack of a steady challenge, apart from the random hazards, is the mouse controls. The planet is so fast and responsive that dodging slower, less random, dangers would be trivial. With a maximum speed and some inertia the dangers could be toned down and increased in number over time, resulting in a less chaotic and random experience. Maybe you want it to be chaotic (it's the :smiling_imp: we are talking about after all), in which case disregard the previous comment.
Some juicy effects, like particles and camera shake, would have gone a long way in increasing the feel of the core loop too.
Competent entry overall.
The graphics were nice, I especially liked the clouds on the planet, and the tentacle animation. Presentation-wise I think the game could be easily improved by adding some visual effects, most notably screenshake. I always hand out this video at times like this because it's great place to start learning to give your game a more visceral feeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
I think your game could use some tweaking of the difficulty ramp up. I played for about two minutes and did feel that the game became harder over time, and it has rudiments of the "just one more round" feeling that's important for your genre, but I think you need to make the experience a bit tighter. Visual effects can help with that, good crunchy sound effects are another way of achieving that goal. But the most important piece I think is to make each death feel self-inflicted instead of random.
I really appreciate you took the effort of making an intro. That's a nice way of easing the player into the game. A Trump joke is always good for a chuckle, but personally I prefer a bit more depth when it comes to humour.
Unfortunately the music did nothing for me. It just seemed like random notes.
Overall I think the game, while simple, was quite nice to play and could become really addictive if you keep polishing some more.